Did I Mention I Won the Lottery?

by Julie Butterfield

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

Before leaving the house she held the lottery ticket in her hand. It had lived in her pocket throughout the previous week and had gone everywhere with her. But now that she knew it was worth so much, she was frightened at the thought of taking it out of the house. Suppose she lost it? Suppose she put it in her purse and then she had her purse stolen? If she put it back in her pocket it might fall out.

 

She put the phone down and wiped the sweat from her forehead. If it was going to take this much out of her spending a few hundred pounds, how on earth would she cope with spending 15.7 million?

 

15.7 million pounds. Like a little mantra inside her head the number seemed to fit in with her footsteps as she walked towards the nearest shopping area. 15.7 million. Oh my God, she had won 15.7 million and it would soon be in her bank. Where should she start?

 

Her credit card, her trusty companion, had started to shout with glee when it was taken from her purse but even so, she had spent very little.

 

The only thing she didn’t do was tell Daniel. Each evening he came home and told her how hard his life was, how hard he had to work. And Rebecca did what she had been doing for years, nodding in the right places, serving his meal and waiting for him to shut up so blessed peace would reign in the house.

 

She took very little with her. She had of course shopped like a professional over the last weeks and the wardrobe of clothes she left behind in Leeds each Saturday morning reflected the amount of money in her bank account. In Darlington she was a different person. The downtrodden wife of a grumpy, belligerent man. It was getting harder and harder to play the role when she returned.

  

My Review:

 

This was a fun and cleverly penned tale; written with a sharp wit, crafty insights, heart-squeezes, edge of my seat anxious encounters, and wily plot twists. I was reluctant to put my Kindle down and enjoyed this shrewdly paced and well-crafted tale that hit all the feels. I chuckled, gasped, and huffed my way through this curiously enticing and cannily appealing story.

 

Rebecca had won a huge jackpot and didn’t tell anyone, least of all her arrogant and pompous husband. She couldn’t come to terms with the win herself for over a week.   Gradually she slowly began to enjoy and amass longed for items such as a lovely home in the town she had previously lived in and greatly missed – but it still wasn’t time to tell her obnoxious husband just yet; new clothes and toiletries – which she easily hid from her husband as he didn’t pay much attention to her anyway; a better quality of wine – which was cagily pushed to the back of the fridge; a new car that her husband wouldn’t approve of, so of course she couldn’t tell him about that.   No, it was never the right time to tell her husband of her good fortune as he was vile, controlling, overbearing, and hideous, he would certainly take over and where was the fun in that?

 

A large part of the problem was that Rebecca was spineless and had allowed her husband to browbeat and treat her in such an abominable fashion while their marriage steadily deteriorated over the last five years; I was quite frustrated with her lack of backbone and tendencies for indecision, avoidance, and waffling. I alternated between wanting to give her a good kick in her can and anxiously holding my breath that she was going to cave and give in to her overriding sense of guilt. She avoided detection for two months – eight weeks of heady bliss – by stealthily living a double life. Then it really hit the fan.